3 Common Myths About Age Discrimination Busted!

3 Common Myths About Age Discrimination â€" Busted! 3 Common Myths About Age Discrimination â€" Busted! “Hi, Jewel. My problem is I do great on the phone. In the phone interview I’m told my resume is excellent and it seems like I would fit right in. But that high automatically turns into a low when I show up for the in-person interview. Meanwhile, my stakes are getting higher and higher, because my regular job ended more than 6 months ago, and I’ve been piecing together some consulting since then, but not enough to sustain me for any period of time.” The US Bureau of Labor Statistics says the average length of unemployment for someone age 54 is nearly 1 year. While age discrimination is a real phenomenon, it’s not an impossible hurdle. Candidates in their 60s are getting placed week in and week out. You can achieve the same thing, but first, let’s bust some common age discrimination myths that may be holding you back. Myth #1: The Older You Are, The More Age Discrimination You’ll Face Age discrimination can happen at 40. It can also happen at 62. But it doesn’t automatically go up with each passing year. Believing that can turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, believe in something that you can control: you have the power to sharpen your job search skills. “Sharpen” does not equal, “increase.” The strategy is not to apply for more jobs. The strategy is to dive deeper into each opportunity. What companies do you want to work for? Focus there. Who can you identify as relevant people to speak to in those companies? Use LinkedIn to find out. Don’t know them? So what? LinkedIn is no longer a platform on which you need to know the person in real life, have a mutual connection, or be affiliated with the same college, etc. For every opportunity, devote the time and effort to starting a conversation with a real person. Myth #2: Deleting The Years From Your Resume Is The Best Approach Removing the dates from your education is the 1st fundamental move to make. But sometimes you can swing the pendulum too far in the other direction and take all the years for everything off your resume. What this can quickly lead to, however, is skepticism on the part of the employer, who wonders what you’re trying to hide. The problem is not the dates. With or without dates, there are numerous ways for the prospective employer to find out your age. The problem is concentrating on covering something up, instead of concentrating on showcasing what you have. The key here is to present yourself as something other than a commodity. Your job in order to get a job is to position yourself differently from the other candidates, which leads directly to… Myth #3: Your Experience Is Better Than The 30-Year-Old’s Naturally, your experience is richer and more nuanced. You’ve seen things in the professional realm, you’ve been through things, and you’ve made things happen. But you do yourself a disservice if you slap everything onto your resume and expect the reader to automatically be impressed. Just having the experience is no longer good enough. What you’ve done with that experience, and how you can use that background to benefit the next employer that’s what matters. You’ve been in operations for 20 years? Bring your past knowledge to the table in a way that impacts and influences today. When you apply for a role at a new, state-of-the-art logistics center, float a theory about how well you’ve seen facilities of a similar size in a similar industry benefit from automation. Bonus points if the automation you talk about is something you’ve used, better yet: implemented in your recent past. New case studies are coming out detailing how a 62-year-old, another 62-year-old, and a 63 ½-year-old all just got hired. They’re featured in our free presentation, “How To Get Hired In HALF The Time, Without Getting Ghosted Because Of Age Discrimination.” Learn what they did, and find out what to say to get calls back from the recruiters and decision makers you need, plus the magic response you can use immediately if they tell you, “you’re overqualified.”